Sure it would be worth the while... I mean... imagine being able to store entire hard drives on say, your USB pen, or on a floppy. Set your computer to make weekly (or nightly) backups overnight to a 1kb file. And as processors are constantly evolving, so too will the compressing speeds drop. And you probably wouldn't need to compress your files down to 500 bytes... bringing it down to say, 10 megs would be just as ideal (or 1+ megs for your floppy) or to 700 megs and toss it on a CD.
It would naturally change many industries too; especially if under professional development the processing time can be reduced. Transfer full length feature films to the theatres for digital real-time screening... not to mention all those 56k'ers out there
mmmm piracy